Good Red Inks For Teachers Grading On Awful Paper?

[GouletPens]

It's not often I'm completely stumped, but someone asked me a question and I simply don't have a good answer. Here's a question posed to me from a teacher who emailed me: "I'm a 5th grade teacher and I grade a lot of papers. Sometimes they are from workbooks with terrible paper or on terrible copy paper. I love to use my fountain pen to grade but the bleed through is usually awful. Is there either an ink or nib or even an ink and nib combination that would make this process less painful. "

 

Obviously, nib/pen choice is a factor here, and going with a smaller nib size will help. But I'd love to know what red inks you teachers out there are using with success on the worst of papers to prevent bleeding and feathering. This is one area that I haven't yet done much exploring, but I can see that it would be something that would be great to share so that the thankless work that teachers do can be made a little more interesting Thanks for your input!

[GouletPens]

To answer my own question, I saw there's already a thread regarding this! My initial search didn't come up with anything, but as soon as I posted this thread, I saw this one as a 'recommended topic'.

[Uncle Red]

Brian, she could try the red ink in the Oct Ink Drop. It's working very well with the cheap paper they give me in the office.

[Ghost Plane]

This is one time I recommend MB ink. I sat down with a legal pad where most of my inks bled like crazy and MB performed the best. [Caveat, this is the older ink before the latest overhaul] Waterman red was 2nd best.

[tar heel]

You can forget grading workbooks with any FP. The paper most are printed on is pretty similar to newsprint. I either use a ballpoint on those or (more often) a red or green pencil. No matter how much I like my shotgun, its just the wrong tool for swatting flies.

[PAC 1957]

My red inks uggestions :

Caran d?Ache Sunset ( rich red with some dark nuance)

Montblanc Burgundy red (lovely dark red)

Best

Piero

[duboing]

Most of my family are teachers of one kind or another, and from the primary teachers to the university lecturers, we prefer to mark in green ink: less aggressive.

[PAC 1957]

I agree with Duboing that red inks may sometimes be considered "aggressive", although dark reds, like the MB Burgundy red probably don't run this risk.

In case You decide to go for green inks, my suggestion would be:

 

1) Montblanc Irish Green

2) Pelikan Edelstein Jade

According to my experience, they both work great on all kinds of papers and their peculiar green color tones make them suitable to replace red inks.

 

Best

Piero

[reprieve]

I tend to use Skrip Red. Noodler's Widowmaker also does extremely well on cheap paper.

Edited October 6, 2012 by reprieve

[bphollin]

"If you can't grade it with Skrip Red, it's not worth grading." (Skrip can have that line.) There's some seriously awful paper that no fountain pen and ink can tame. That's when I go to my ballpoints.

[Vshin]

If she corrects in red ink, make sure it has rock-solid water resistance. I recall a teacher that was infatuated with red fountain ink and it wasn't long before her students figured out they could "wash" the ink off the paper with careful soaking.

 

Unfortunately almost every red out there has poor water-resistance. The only water-resistant reds that I'm aware of are:

 

1. Noodler's Fox Red

2. Platinum Pigmented Rose Red

Edited October 8, 2012 by Vshin

[Muncle]

I have been using Camel's Scarlet red for a week now. I've done work in Hilroy scribblers, and it seems to stand fine. As for permanence: I feared this too for a spell, but, at least in high school, I haven't run into any problems that permanent red ink would solve.

[XiaoMG]

I have not found a feather-free red in the fountain pen realm. I much, much prefer to do red marking with a Signo DX gel pen. I guess that's cheating but really no FP ink comes close...and it's waterproof.

[TomJKT]

Finally I got something to say! I'm a newbie to this forum and also quite new to the world of FPs. But I'm a teacher, so I at least I can make a little contribution here.

My students almost all print out on cheap office paper, 70g/80g. I do all my corrections with a Lamy Safari with M-NIB and Sailor Jentle red ink. Of course the Safari FP is in red as well

Instead of being less aggressive using green ink, the color of hope, I go the other way, I sometimes use the bloody red Montblanc Hitchcock ink and tell them that I will do so. This sets a certain tone and they smile about it.

I considered to use my scented red inks by Monblanc to get rid of these, since I do not really like them, but I'm not sure what kind of image I would convey with this. I mean, e.g. using Love ink by Montblanc? Gimme a break

Cheers, Thomas

[andyd1]

I am actually a male teacher too and once used the MB rose scented ink and told my students: "Don't feel bad about your mistakes, even when you got an F... at least your paper smells like roses now." And they all started to sniff... that was kind of funny but I guess after a couple of days you cannot smell the rose scent anymore

[Bo Bo Olson]

If you are going green, you don't need to spend a lot of money on MB Irish Green or Edelstein Jade (have Jade).

 

Pelikan Brilliant Green 4001, is a surprisingly good ink.

Shades well too.

Just loaded my 400NN maxi-semi-flex/flexi OF with it, in I've been talking up that ink a lot and decided to show my self again why I am.

Shades well with regular flex too.

 

It's sort of Green...Green.

[2GreyCats]

I tend to use Skrip Red. Noodler's Widowmaker also does extremely well on cheap paper.

 

+2 on Skrip Red. I'm using it on copy paper that students print out their work on, as well as whatever notebook paper they turn in to me, and I've had no feathering or bleed issues at all. This is in a pen that takes long international cartridges, so I bought long Waterman carts, and refill them with a needle from my Sheaffer bottle.

[2GreyCats]

If you are going green, you don't need to spend a lot of money on MB Irish Green or Edelstein Jade (have Jade).

 

Pelikan Brilliant Green 4001, is a surprisingly good ink.

Shades well too.

Just loaded my 400NN maxi-semi-flex/flexi OF with it, in I've been talking up that ink a lot and decided to show my self again why I am.

Shades well with regular flex too.

 

It's sort of Green...Green.

PR Spearmint green does well also on the papers that get handed in to me. I use it on essays for the standard proofing marks, with margin comments in purple/violet.

[Tiffanyhenschel]

This is one time I recommend MB ink. I sat down with a legal pad where most of my inks bled like crazy and MB performed the best. [Caveat, this is the older ink before the latest overhaul] Waterman red was 2nd best.

 

+1

I have tried Racing Green, Irish Green, Ink of Joy, Burgandy Red, Lavender Violet, Hitchcock, Collodi, Diamond Blue, and Midnight Blue on cheap student paper. They have all behaved perfectly.

 

Incidentally, I marked an assignment in Hitchcock Red with a 1.1mm italic nib recently, and the students thought it was "awesome" and "cool." (their words)

[Bearcat]

I agree with BPHollin on the Scrip Red. Also, Noodler's Nikita seems to work well for me, especially using the included EF eyedropper pen (if you buy the large eye-dropper bottle - $19 from Todd Nussbaum at www.isellpens.com) that holds a ton of ink for those marathon grading sessions....Review is here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?/topic/198882-noodlers-nikita/page__p__2023408__hl__%2Breview+%2Bnoodlers+%2Bnikita__fromsearch__1#entry2023408

Edited October 20, 2012 by Bearcat